Why I Do What I Do

The Making of a Chef

By Chef Kevin Hermann

Over the years, I have been asked the same two questions more times than I can count. “Why do you do what you do?” and “What made you want to be a chef?” My answer has always been a simple one, but the meaning behind it has deepened with every shift, every service, and every guest I’ve had the privilege to feed.

It started long before I ever stepped behind a line. I was working the front of the house, pouring coffee and setting plates of breakfast in front of strangers who were just beginning their day. I came to understand, even then, that the food was almost beside the point. What mattered was the small kindness of the moment, the warmth of the cup in someone’s hands, a soft greeting before the world demanded too much of them. If I could send a single guest into their day feeling cared for, I knew I had done something that mattered.

When I crossed through those swinging kitchen doors for the first time, I expected the work to be different, harder, faster, less personal. And it was all of those things. But what I didn’t expect was that the same thread of care I had carried at the table came with me to the stove. Behind those doors, I learned that a kitchen is not just a place where orders are filled. It is a place where intention is folded into every sauce, every sear, every plate that leaves the pass. The hands change, the rhythm changes, but the heart of the work does not.

In my younger years, I was hungry to prove myself. I burned my forearms on sheet pans, stayed late scrubbing stations long after the lights dimmed, and chased the approval of chefs who taught me by example what discipline really meant. I learned to listen for the sound of a properly seasoned pan, to read the color of butter as it browned, to trust the quiet confidence that comes only from repetition. Those years shaped me. They taught me that craft is built one task at a time, with humility and a willingness to do the unglamorous work well.

Somewhere along the way, my answer began to shift. “I love to serve people” became something fuller. I came to see my work as the chance to give people permission to slow down, to set their day aside for an hour or two, to rest at a table that someone had thought carefully about. The world moves fast, and most days it pulls us along whether we want to be moved or not. A meal, a real meal, made with care and offered with grace, can stop time for a little while. It can bring a family back to one another. It can soften a hard week. It can be the place where a friendship is rekindled or a life is celebrated.

That, to me, is what hospitality really is. It is not garnish or technique or the fashion of a particular season. It is the table itself, and the trust placed in the hands that prepare it. As chefs, we are entrusted with something tender. People come to us hungry in more ways than one, and we have the rare gift of being able to feed both kinds of hunger at once.

So when I am asked now why I do what I do, my answer comes from a deeper well. I do this work because I am grateful, for the chefs who shaped me, for the cooks who stand beside me each night, for the guests who choose to spend their time at a table I helped set. I do it because I believe our craft is a calling: to create, to inspire, and to provide. It asks for dedication, humility, and passion of us, and in return it gives back empowerment, grace, and the quiet privilege of carrying tradition forward.

That is why I cook. That is why I will keep cooking. To bring people together, to offer them a moment of bliss, and to remind them, even briefly, that they are welcome at the table.